Region

'Black Knight' not as bad as it looks

Watch out for yellow snow

Dre and Snoop all washed up

Great story on page or screen

Potter a magical movie for everyone

BEST BAR • 1. Kilroy's Sports

BEST WEEKEND ACTIVITY • 1. Brown County

Tradition at its best

It's that time of year again: crowded shopping malls, last minute gift purchases, countless holiday parties, numbingly cold weather and every students favorite -- final exams. With all of these December duties, it's sometimes hard to enjoy the holiday season. But the IU Ballet Theater's production of "The Nutcracker" is a holiday tradition that might alleviate those dull winter blues.

Jordan River Forum

All year I have watched, read and listened to your columns and opinions on the Hoosier football team and I've come to one conclusion -- you are one of them. You are just as bad as the Purdue players you recently chastised. You have the same qualities "stuck up, jaw jerking" (as you put it in your column) as they do.

BEST IU TRADITION • 1. Sink the Bismark

BEST EVENT • Little 500

Stem Cell research nothing to fear

Imagine if we had the technology to create a medicine that could transform into anything the body needed. If the body was lacking white blood cells, this medicine could take care of it. If the body was lacking skin cells, this medicine could take care of it. If an organ of the body was being eaten by cancer, this medicine could create healthy cells to replace the cancerous ones. It would be great, right? You bet.

'N Sync obsessive

My roommate has an out-of-the-ordinary obsession for a 21-year-old college student: 'N Sync. I like to refer to them as her "boys." She can't go half an hour without raving about Justin, J.C., Lance, Joey and Chris. I've timed her before and yes, I do know all of their names. I also know more about them than I'd like to know. Justin's favorite cereal is Cap'n Crunch without the Crunch Berries and Lance would have been an astronaut if he wasn't a member of the boy band. It's common for her to wake up in the morning after snuggling under her 'N Sync blanket and tell me about a dream that her "boys" were in.

Seat belts should be a personal choice

Let me paint you a little picture: A nice sunny day in Bloomington, and there you are, driving down Third Street without a care in the world. Windows open, pumpin out the 'Coug,' you turn onto Indiana Avenue looking for some action. Wait, what is that up ahead? Some cops in the road, hope there wasn't an accident. Huh, they are waving you over to the side of the road.

BEST RESTAURANT • 1. Malibu Grill

Hand me the remote

Personally, I am glad that I had a ridiculous amount of homework to do this semester, for it rendered me unable to watch any TV. While I'm not about to accuse the television of being a bastion of intellectualism, it at least provided us with decent entertainment back in the day. I'm talking about an era where you could watch episodes of "ALF," "Cheers," "Who's The Boss?," "Night Court," "MacGyver," "Mr. Belvedere" and "The Golden Girls" during any given week. Now, in the modern era, such quality programs are few and far between. (OK, so "The Golden Girls" was terrible, but just forget that for the sake of this argument).

BEST BAND • 1. Three Minute Mile

RPS is failing students

Here I go again. I know, it's not fair that I beat up IU's administrators. But when they make deplorable comments or conspire to stick it to students yet again, I feel it's the least I can do. Today, I'm referring to two recent Residential Programs and Services decisions as noted in the Nov. 19 edition of the IDS. The first decision was to drop the miss-a-meal program, in which IU students could donate points off their cards for a specified charity. Now when I found out about the 60 percent of the donated money that RPS kept for "overhead costs," I was outraged and called and wrote several administrators and trustees, asking them to stop RPS' skimming (I believe it's technically called "fraud" and is supposedly punishable by law, who knew?).

Cincinnati police kill black man

CINCINNATI -- Police killed a black man Wednesday in the second such shooting since rioting erupted in April over another black man's death. Four officers, both black and white, were checking out a report of a gunman involved in an apparent robbery at a bus stop north of downtown and shot the suspect during a chase, authorities said.

Arab League warns U.S.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordan and the Arab League appealed to the United States not to attack Iraq, saying Wednesday that such a strike would have dangerous consequences. Jordan "rejects the use of force, external interference in Iraq's affairs and meddling with its integrity," said Saleh Qallab, a government spokesman and a minister of state.